The use of “instant messaging” (IM) systems is prevalent in the industry today. It has begun to expand as a form of electronic communication in recent years. Although instant messaging was initially a tool in the chat rooms specifically built for entertainment purposes, its application is now spanning the internal communications of corporations. Having all advantages of email messaging, namely being non-intrusive, it does not have many of the disadvantages of the email communication, namely its offline nature. It can easily be recorded and archived, using not a large memory space. Instant messaging technique, to be used as a serious method of communication, however, needs to be improved. For example, the issue of “privacy” in terms of the text that is received via an instant message from another person has not been adequately addressed.
In an IM session, the text typically comes in as “clear text” and is readily viewable and/or readable by anyone near one's computer. This could potentially create problems, if the nature of the text being received is confidential and/or personal in nature, and onlookers are able to read such text inadvertently. Furthermore, often new users enter the “chat room” after the conversation has started. It is a difficult job for the newcomer to figure out what the subject is and extract the gist of the conversation quickly. In addition, all of the chat room participants in a normal chat room have the same type and level of access to the text in the chat room. This also can be potentially problematic. With the current system, upon entrance of a specific user who should not have access to such data, the chat room has to be stopped or all previous data has to be deleted.